Thursday, 1 August 2013
There were, I think, two things that shaped the reactions to what was always going to be an interesting day, and both of them had emerged the night before as we sat around the table at Martinique.
The first had started to seriously come into play on Tuesday morning, when The Visitors joined me on an abbreviated version of the morning walk. The regular version is usually something done solo or in conversation with someone who's travelling at around the same pace. I'm not in the habit of turning and talking over my shoulder to people travelling behind me.
I'd already done a fair bit of that on the Monday as we headed south out of Townsville, although the fact that The visitors dozed most of the way meant things weren't as bad as they might have been.
In any case, by Wednesday morning repeated twists to talk over the right shoulder had left Hughesy with a sore neck that persisted, to some degree, waxing and waning through to the following weekend and beyond. At times it delivered something close to absolute hell, with aching muscles gone rock hard, at others it receded into the background to the point where silly people became careless and started doing the things that had probably caused the problem to arise in the first place.
There was a point, early in proceedings on Tuesday night, when I hoped Someone would spot that I was in severe discomfort and volunteer to take my place accompanying The Visitors on the cruise, but I underestimated Someone's determination to chill out in the opulence of the unit at Martinique. Nothing was going to get in the way of Madam's Day Off, least of all a Hughesy who might be suspected of spooking it to wheedle his way out of a commitment he wasn't keen on fulfilling.
That last point, the not keen on bit, underlies the second influence on the perceptions about the day's developments.
Very early on Tuesday evening Psychologist Girl had been close to dumbfounded to learn I'd never been to Whitehaven, which brings a couple of issues into play.
The first is a sort of local versus tourist vibe that runs through the regional mindset. There's a fairly clear distinction between things for us and activities closely associated with them, which tend to be seen as overpriced and beyond the budgets of the average Bowenite. We tend to think of Cannonvale as somewhere to go shopping when you're after something in particular that you won't find locally, with Airlie as somewhere to go for lunch as part of the excursion.
We tend to look at the variety of activities being touted along the main street down in Airlie, the parasailing, snorkeling, dive courses and all, as tourist activities and regard the other retail outlets as gaudy purveyors of T-shirts and the like, places that flog off a variety of tat that's not going to find its way into a local wardrobe.
There is, after all, a fairly definite limit to the number of T-shirts emblazoned with the words Airlie Beach you'll want in the drawer, and in Hughesy's case the limit isn't going to rise above zero any time soon.